Deep Deceit: A Detective Morgan Foster Vigilante Justice Thriller Page 2

  As he got close to the safe house, Bill noticed the sun was low in the sky, casting long shadows between the buildings. The area where the safe house was built was jammed with cheap apartments, filled with workers that didn’t ask any questions. People were constantly darting in and out of the buildings, like bees going in and out of a hive, the pale white buildings stretching upward, most of them anywhere from five to six stories, lines of clothes hanging out to dry, waving in the wind. Bill darted into the lobby of the building two doors over from his, walking straight through the building and out the back door. Keeping his head low, and checking over his shoulder, he made a left turn and walked up the block, passing two more buildings. Just before the doorway to his building, he spun around, checking the road. No blue sedan.

  As he disappeared inside, he felt the cool air of the air conditioning cover him. His was one of the few buildings in the area that had whole building air conditioning. After the day he’d had, Bill was grateful.

  Bill took the steps to the third floor, avoiding the elevator. Bad things could happen in elevators. Small space. No escape until the doors opened. At least in the stairwell, he had options. Opening the door to the third floor, he could smell someone cooking, the aroma of garlic and meat filtering down the hallway. At the second apartment from the stairwell, Bill stopped, pulled a key out of his pocket, and unlocked the door. He pushed it open and then slipped inside, locking it behind him.

  Pulling the hood down off of his head and the backpack off his shoulders, he tossed it on one of the chairs nearby and walked to the balcony window. Without going outside, he stared down at the street below. He didn’t want to be spotted standing on the patio. There were only a couple of cars driving by, none of them a blue sedan. He let out a sigh. There were days he loved his job and other days he wasn’t so sure.

  Bill walked over to the television, flipping it on. At least the CIA had been nice enough to make sure that he had Wi-Fi and cable. Not all of the safehouses were quite as nice, although, by American standards, it wasn’t nice at all. Small, sparsely decorated with cheap furniture, there was barely anything in the rooms. As the TV came to life, he saw a television newscaster, a woman dressed modestly, speaking into the camera, her Farsi without any regional accent. “Our Supreme Leader has informed the nation that an air defense drill was held today near the city of Natanz. This represents a great accomplishment for our country as we continue to beat back the evil forces of the world.”

  Bill sighed. “An air defense drill, huh?” he muttered under his breath. He stood in front of the television for another second, watching as the newscaster quickly changed the subject to the success of the Iranian national soccer team and the upcoming World Cup. That was how they did it in Iran — just enough plausible information to keep people from asking too many questions, an occasional truth buttressing the many lies. Those that questioned what they were told died. It was a pretty simple calculus. Keep your head down and stay out of trouble or become a target for the intelligence service.

  Bill turned around, staring at the bag he’d brought up with him. He felt tension surge through his body. Whoever was driving the blue sedan would be back. They would find him. It was just a question of time. He walked to his bag, pulled out his laptop, quickly connected it to an encrypted service. Typing the message, he knew he needed a shower before he started his run for the border. As he clicked send, he stared around the little apartment one more time, checking the time on his watch. He hoped they got it in time. Glancing outside, he knew the sun would be going down soon. That’s when he would make his move.

  It was time for him to disappear.

  3

  Duncan had been working on the computer in his office at the Oceanside Gunsmithing and Range putting in an order for ammunition, a new set of wrenches, and trigger parts when he decided to check his email. It had been a while. He wasn’t much of a tech guy. At his age, he didn’t have much use for it.

  Scrolling through the messages in his inbox, he managed to delete a bunch of them, advertisements for new trigger mounts, replacement stocks, and a sale on gunsmithing tools peppering his inbox. He pretty much had all the parts and tools he needed in order to fix any gun that anyone brought to him at the range, minus the new set of wrenches he’d just ordered. He’d done custom work on guns ever since he left the Army and opened his business.

  Scrolling down to the bottom of his messages, he saw one from the local VA, offering a new support group, and another one from an email address he didn’t recognize. Curious, he clicked on it, hoping he wasn’t exposing himself to some phishing scam.

  The message read, “Hey Uncle Duncan, long time no see. Have been camping. Saw a turkey vulture. Hope to be home for the holidays. Reach out if you can. I could use your help. Billy.”

  A tingle ran up and down Duncan's spine. Billy. Was it really him? Thoughts began to crash through Duncan’s head. Bill Bryce was the son of Joe Bryce, Duncan’s best friend in the Army. Bill had stayed in touch with Duncan after his dad died a few years ago from cancer. But then he disappeared. Duncan had gotten messages from him occasionally or a postcard from some exotic location. Billy had told him he traveled for an international conglomerate working on logistical issues. Duncan knew better. Whatever Billy was up to, it wasn’t something he could talk about.

  And normally that was okay…

  But the words in the message that Billy had sent — specifically vulture and camping – were codewords that Joe and Duncan used to use when they were deployed and in trouble. It was their own private code.

  Duncan frowned as he sent the email off to print, hearing the whirr of the printer warming up behind him. As Duncan picked up the paper, still warm from the printer, he slumped down in the chair in front of his desk, staring at it. The paper fluttered a little bit as his right hand shook. Duncan gripped it in a fist, glaring at it. Memories flooded through Duncan’s mind of Billy as a toddler, running to see his dad and Duncan when they got home from being deployed. His mind fast-forwarded to Billy at his high school graduation, the party loud and raucous with current and former military members consuming more booze than anyone should be allowed, their voices echoing off the other backyards in Joe’s development.

  Duncan stared at the paper again, looking at the date. He pressed his lips together. It was nearly a week old. He pounded his fist on the desk. Billy had been in trouble for a week and tried to reach out to someone he could trust. A knot formed in Duncan's stomach. He’d let Billy down. Duncan hadn’t even bothered to respond.

  Billy was on his own, in trouble. There was no way that he would’ve reached out to Duncan otherwise. Duncan gathered up the paper and his car keys and headed for the door, his heart pounding in his chest. His mind reeled. Was he too late to help?

  4

  The constant thrum of the out-of-sync boat engines was grating on Bill's every last nerve. The two men at the helm didn’t seem to notice, though. Bill had hidden down below for the first half of the trip until one of the men came to get him. “It dark,” he said in broken English, his body in silhouette against what was left of the dwindling afternoon sunlight. “You come out. Wrap this around head. Drones.” He threw a patterned scarf at Bill. Without saying anything else, the man turned and went back up to the main deck.

  Bill glanced back toward the set of three steps that led out to a narrow door under the back of the boat he’d hired to get him out of Iran. He picked up the scarf and held it near his face. It smelled dank and moldy, faintly like fish, as though it had been sitting in some abandoned corner of the boat for too long. He shrugged. At least some fresh air might do him some good. He’d been stuck below for about four hours, the small boat putting along in the Persian Gulf bobbing along in its choppy waters. Unable to see the horizon from inside the dark cabin directly below where the men were standing as they steered the boat, he’d thrown up a few times. A little motion sickness wasn’t a big deal when you’re busy running for your life, Bill thought, picking up the thin scarf and wrap
ping it around his head and face.

  Bill stood up off the cot where the men had told him to stay while they got the boat started. He wobbled and reached for something to grab as the boat hit a wave. Underneath the cot was an empty storage spot outfitted with hooks on the inside. When Bill had first gotten to the boat, the men had taken him down below and shown him the secret compartment. The man he’d hired, Arman, who had dark hair and a crooked nose that looked like it had been broken a few too many times said, “They come, you go inside and lock. You hide.”

  It was a simple way to move contraband cargo over the waters of the Gulf, particularly people, Bill thought, looking at the interior of the compartment. He’d been lucky. Other than having to sit down below and deal with motion sickness while the men piloted the boat, there hadn’t been much for him to do. Nothing much, except sit and think.

  They’d only stopped one time, and that was for fuel. They hadn’t even bothered to hit dry land to do it. Arman, the same man who had shown him the secret compartment and happily taken the stacks of cash he’d offered for a ride out of Iran, had come down below an hour before. “We make stop for gas. You stay here. Don’t come up,” he said, slamming and locking the cabin door behind him, pitching Bill into complete darkness.

  The engines had cut their whining, the boat bobbing up and down a new wave of nausea choking Bill. He retched but didn’t throw up. Taking a deep breath, Bill could hear another engine in the distance, the low thrum churning through the water. His heart started to race, wondering if somehow the Iranian Ministry agents had found him stowed away on this little boat, and Arman and his buddy were turning him in. A minute later, the approaching engines got closer and then cut out. He felt the boat bob even more severely, rocking from side to side, forcing him to brace himself against the hull as the wake of the approaching craft tipped his ride back and forth in a trough of water.

  There were two small portholes in the cabin, both of them covered with thick, black felt. Trying not to gag again, he got up and pushed a tiny bit of the fabric aside to see. There was another boat attached to the boat he was on. He could hear voices and footsteps but couldn’t see much except the fiberglass of a flatboat next to the one he was on. His eyes got wide, his hands clammy. The last thing he wanted to do is end up in the Iranian Ministry of Security and Intelligence’s hands. That would be a death sentence. But there was nothing he could do about it at the moment. All he could do was hope that Arman and his buddy knew what they were doing. He waited for another second and then heard men talking in Farsi. It was a dialect he wasn’t familiar with, though he was fluent. Then he heard the gas tanks being filled. He turned his head, listening, hearing the lapping of the water against the hull as the two boats bounced on the current. The acrid odor of gasoline filled the compartment around him, making his eyes water and his nose burn.

  Slumping down on the cot, Bill closed his eyes for a second, swallowing, trying to chase the latest wave of bile back down his throat. “Clever,” he muttered, realizing they were refilling the boat with cans of gasoline while they were out on the water. Anyone looking probably thought the two boats were exchanging cargo or fishing gear, or even that one of them had run out of gas. Refueling the little boat out in the middle of the ocean meant no stops at dry land where anyone who might notice could see them.

  A few minutes later, Bill heard the engines of both boats start, one of them pulling away. The hatch popped open, the last bits of the afternoon sunlight streaming down to the cabin along with some much-needed fresh air. “You stay here. We keep going,” Arman said.

  An hour later, when Arman had invited Bill to come up and sit on the deck for the remainder of the ride, it was an offer he couldn’t turn down. Between the almost constant nausea from the motion and the added bonus of the gas fumes, Bill quickly wrapped the dirty scarf around his head and made his way up on the deck, carrying his backpack. Arman pointed for him to sit on the back of the boat without saying anything else. He reached into a cooler and handed Bill a bottle of water. Bill said thank you in Farsi and then muttered under his breath, “Almost as good as service on an airline,” he thought, wishing for a packet of peanuts.

  Glancing around, Bill realized that he could’ve been on any body of water in the world. Once away from land, it was hard to tell the difference between oceans and large lakes. His memory drifted to the times he’d gone fishing with his dad off Tampa Bay and a summer boating excursion they’d had on Lake Michigan. The wind and the salt air blew in his face as the dusk started to settle to the west.

  That was the direction they were going, southwest to be precise.

  Once Bill had escaped the Ministry agents in Isfahan, he’d been on the move nearly constantly for the last twenty-four hours, first picking up a ride in a caravan of trucks that were heading southwest out of the city. If he’d gone north, which was a little bit of a shorter route, it would’ve taken him directly into Tehran, the heart of Islamic rule. Though he could have tried to make it to the airport on his Canadian passport, he knew it would never have worked. Iran was always crawling with agents looking to make a name for themselves. The Iranian government was very generous with those who caught traitors, particularly Americans.

  Bill had opted for a more covert route, one that took him southwest. He considered Qatar, where there was a large military installation run by the United States. He figured if he got there, he could at least use his citizenship and position with the CIA to get some protection and access to communications equipment, but right before he went to Iran, he’d heard some reports about increased security in the region. It was almost as if the Iranians and Iraqis had suspected that herds of people were running towards Qatar. They were scooping them up in their dragnets, a mix of refugees from Afghanistan after its fall, smugglers, and people like Bill — people who were desperately trying to get off the radar and into friendly territory.

  He had settled on Kuwait. It was known by most Americans as the oil-rich country that had drawn the attention of Saddam Hussein decades before, prompting a response from the United States from thousands of miles away to protect the tiny country. Bill had taken the caravan as far south as Basra and then gone directly south towards the Persian Gulf. Based on what he could understand from the two men he’d hired to take him to Kuwait, they would take a route around Bubiyan Island and then drop him near Kuwait City. From there he’d be on his own.

  Before he’d left Isfahan, he’d done two things: Booked himself a one-way ticket from Kuwait City to Brussels under one of the fake identities he’d gotten for himself outside of the CIA’s purview and sent a message to his Uncle Duncan.

  Sitting on the back of the boat, Bill wondered if Duncan had gotten it yet. Was he even still alive? Bill hadn’t talked to Duncan in a couple of years. If Duncan got it, he would certainly understand the language in it. He just hoped Duncan was as bad at looking at his emails as he used to be. With any luck, that would give Bill enough time to get himself back to the US before Duncan found it. In any case, he wanted Duncan to know he was in trouble. The man had been like a second father to him, especially after his own dad had died, the ravages of liver cancer eating him from the inside out. The doctors had said it was just bad luck, but Bill was never sure. His dad was probably exposed to some crazy chemical the military had been testing and didn't bother to let him know there might be a carcinogenic risk.

  Arman looked over his shoulder, pointing at a rickety dock they were approaching. He stared at Bill, “There. You give us money before you go.”

  Bill nodded. He’d already paid Arman and his buddy half of their five-thousand-dollar fee when they’d left the dock. Bill grabbed his backpack. It held all of his personal possessions including an encrypted flash drive of the CIA operatives that had infiltrated Iran’s nuclear program. It’d taken two of the six months he’d had in Iran in order to get the information together. What was on it was more valuable than gold — the names of operatives from several different countries that were posing as workers for the
Iranian government. Their families lived in Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Canada, and a couple of other countries Bill couldn’t even remember. Whether because they were friendly to the United States or they had misgivings about Iran having nuclear power, it didn’t matter. What they were willing to do was pass information to Bill, which he collected on the flash drive chronicling the exact status of the Iranian nuclear program

  And it was bad. Really bad.

  When the Obama administration had forged a treaty with the Iranians to get them to stop enriching uranium, packaging up billions of dollars in American cash on pallets and flying it in the darkness of night on a C140 only to drop it off at the feet of the mullahs in Tehran, the American administration had assumed the cash would be enough to keep them from continuing their goal of becoming a nuclear nation, one that was strong enough to take out Israel.

  And they were wrong.

  The cash infusion had quickly been funneled off to bad actors and other nation-states, ones that didn’t care about national loyalty or treaties. All they cared about was money. And that money bought the Iranians technology and supplies, as well as personnel. The Chinese and the Russians were happy to take some of the American cash in return for their knowledge.

  Despite the reports in the American media, the Iranians were just about ready to go nuclear. And, they had plans for what they had made, plans that made Bill shudder.

  Bill hugged his backpack closer to him as the boat drew up to the docks. He checked the time on his watch. He had three hours before his flight for Brussels departed out of the Kuwait City Airport. In the blackness, the little boat pulled up next to the dock, the driver cutting the engines as they got close. There was no one there. Arman looped a line over a post nearby, pulling the boat close, the engines still running. Bill reached into the bag, pulling out the other half of the money he owed them, not waiting for them to tie off the boat. He met the man’s eyes in the darkness and nodded, “Thank you,” he said as he handed Arman the cash and stepped off the boat. “By the way, I’m keeping the scarf,” he said, tugging it closer to his face to cover the scar on his cheek.